


A Perfect Man Is Hard To Find

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Blood Drinking, Cannibalism, M/M, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 09:29:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6652393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pitch Black, the cannibalistic Boogeyman serial killer, and his partner, Sandy, a serial killer ex-psychologist who Pitch helped escape from police custody, now live a quiet life together in the suburbs. </p>
<p>One morning, Pitch encounters a beautiful young man on his morning run, and knows at once he must hunt him, devour him. </p>
<p>Sandy is all too glad to help him, and they make a very, very lovely day and night of it. (AKA, murder as an erotic couple bonding activity.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Perfect Man Is Hard To Find

**Author's Note:**

> This is a stand-alone part of the Blood Red Blacksand AU, which I believe I started as part of a fill for the ROTG kinkmeme. That fill can be found here: http://rotg-kink.dreamwidth.org/2389.html?thread=4872533.
> 
> A great deal more of this AU can be found here: http://gretchensinister.tumblr.com/tagged/blood%20red%20blacksand. This link will include both my work and those of others such as Emeraldembers and Marypsue.
> 
> ALSO PLEASE NOTE  
> This is 100% about killing and eating a dude, and there's a lot of eroticism bound up in it. Proceed at your own risk.

            Pitch slams the door open when he returns from his morning run. The chill November wind rushes in behind him, carrying in dry brown leaves that scutter about on the floor before getting caught in the fringe of the living room rug.

            Sandy raises his head from his book calmly, letting a smile grow slowly on his face as he marks his place and pulls his sweater more closely around him. The wide-eyed look on Pitch's face is one he knows well, and everything else—the gray sky before which his silhouette stands stark as a leafless tree, the twin spots of hectic red on his cheekbones, the wilderness that he's brought inside with no apology—well, all of that is just spectacle. Almost a perfect spectacle though, and one that he's ever delighted to be a part of, as it does blend so seamlessly with the substance of this scene.

            Pitch shivers with no self-consciousness—a beautiful sign of his progress in becoming himself, Sandy thinks. It's almost entirely animal. It's hard for him to understand how more people don't notice that about Pitch, even in circumstances when he's wearing his most charming wool suit. It's also hard for him to understand how more people don't recognize it as a warning sign, but, ah, that is all so much the better for his dear, dear, Pitch.

            Pitch smiles without showing his teeth at Sandy for a brief instant, then closes the door almost too quickly to see, and utterly silently, too. Sandy raises his eyebrows, deciding to remain seated for now. This isn't just the restlessness that seizes Pitch when he's hungry, this is something more specific and focused. Sandy is aware of his heart rate rising and his breath quickening, but he makes sure to sound as calm as ever when he speaks. "Welcome back," he says. "Did you enjoy your run?"

            "Oh, oh yes," Pitch says. He chuckles softly as he bends to take off his shoes, putting them away with the precision that's the other aspect of the way he moves that most people don't notice or think about enough. When he stands, he faces Sandy with a grin that undoes everything the wind did. "I found someone, Sandy." He crosses the room and weaves around the coffee table to sit next to Sandy on the couch, his eyes never leaving Sandy's face. "He's perfect. Absolutely perfect. Pure. Brave. Healthy. Strong. Handsome. Unique." He lifts Sandy's free hand from the back of the couch and nuzzles his cheek against it. He kisses the palm, the fingertips. He licks, briefly, then kisses again.

            Sandy's sure Pitch can hear his heartbeat now.

            "I want him," Pitch murmurs. "I want to have him, and I want to offer him to you. I want—" Pitch breaks off to kiss Sandy's hand again, to reach out with his not-quite-surgeon's fingers to undo the buttons of Sandy's sweater. Sandy scratches along the edge of Pitch's hairline, behind his ear, with his neat, blunt nails.

            A tremor runs through Pitch's body and Sandy smiles at him for a long moment, at first not meeting his eyes, not showing his teeth. _It's all right_ , he could say. _Yes, Pitch, you want. You don't have to name everything. Just enough so I can help you_ take _, and still come home to me._ Sandy's never known someone who _wants_ like Pitch. It was why he couldn't satisfy him before, why he had escaped. It was why Pitch had become his patient in the first place. If Sandy had not been Sandy, perhaps he could have taught Pitch how to want in moderation. 

            But Sandy...oh, when he had met Pitch, he had seen in him a wolf that would not wait till the end of the world to devour the sun, a priest who would dare pour some of the blood spilled for the gods down his own throat. Glorious. He could not resist letting Pitch know that he saw that in him, encouraging him to be what he was. He could not resist trying to collect him, either, but even though he had failed, he had only failed so he could see Pitch even better, afterwards. And Pitch, Pitch understood Sandy as well. No one else would have eviscerated four prison guards for him. He would never have been able to make a home with someone who wouldn't have eviscerated four prison guards for him.

            Sandy meets Pitch's eyes and flashes his teeth. Pitch pants for breath, pushes Sandy back onto the couch. "I want you now." He slides his hands under Sandy's shirt, pushing it up, caressing the smooth skin of his soft belly and chest with a focus that makes Sandy think of evisceration and spread his legs wider. "I'm going to feed you so well, with the best that there is," Pitch says, and Sandy moans as he bends to kiss his belly. Oh, Pitch, his wanting, taking creature, who yet always wants to give to him.

            They don't get any more naked than they are then, at least not for several more minutes. They rut against each other, and Sandy suggests nothing else, feeling the desperation in Pitch's movements, and enjoying the nipping kisses Pitch bestows on him too much to ask for any change in scene. When Pitch comes, he does so with a low, breathy moan, holding tightly to Sandy. And though Sandy doesn't really want to come in his pants, that sound brings him awfully close. Only the relative awkwardness of their positions and the fact that he wasn't as overstimulated as Pitch to begin with saves him, even when Pitch does cup a hand around the bulge in his trousers.

            "That was very uncivilized of me, wasn't it?" Pitch murmurs. He strokes Sandy slowly through the fabric. "But this hunt...oh, Sandy. Let's go to the shower. I can do anything you want."

 

*

 

            After a long, hot shower including an enthusiastic blowjob for Sandy and a gentle, thorough wash and hand job for Pitch—"So you can focus and plan, dear," Sandy had told him, milking him through the shuddering wave of his second orgasm—they stand at the end of the long kitchen island, working out details.

            "Tell me about his beauty," Sandy says, a large piece of paper before him, a pencil in both hands. 

            "His hair is white and makes me think of lightning. His features are sharp, because that is how he is, not because he is starving. His body is slender in the same way. His features are not childish, but they are not common adult features either. There is nothing about him that is gray, or that is dragged like a weight. I suppose a descriptor that might work for his face is 'elfin', though I don't care for that. There are too many different sorts of elves that people can imagine these days, it means nothing. His eyes are large, framed with white lashes. He has blue-green irises. His nose is upturned, his mouth is wide. I spoke to him at the water fountain on the trail and I learned that he is six or eight inches shorter than me. He laughs easily, and he has a quick mind, but he moves as though he has never thought of needing to look behind him in the dark. He did not think it strange when I asked about his living situation in the city."

            Sandy holds up a hand, desiring Pitch to pause just for the moment. What he still has to say will be vitally important, but not what can be drawn on the paper. Pitch remains silent. He knows that Sandy likes to do this, to create a representation of Pitch’s prey, before the original is destroyed. 

            "Does this look anything like him?" Sandy asks, turning the paper towards Pitch. And though what Pitch had given him was nothing like what was needed for a composite sketch, it is. It captures the spirit of him, within the fantastical armor that Sandy's sketched on his lean form. 

Pitch nods. "Why did you put armor on him?"

            "It seems like he would need it at some point—we don't want him in it, of course, but this drawing can have what he cannot."

            Pitch nods again, and Sandy smiles. This picture will go with the others in a portfolio in the guest room closet. Sandy is aware that it's dangerous in some ways, to keep sketches of every lovely creature that came into this house and never came out, but it's an acceptable risk, to him. First of all, he would never show the drawings to any of their neighbors when they visited. If they were nosy enough to find the portfolio and look inside it, the likelihood that they would recognize all the subjects as missing persons is low. Then, even if they did, the admission of a shameful interest in true crime as a subject for art would remove all suspicion natural to ideal suburban neighbors. 

            If a law enforcement officer found the drawings, it wouldn't matter. Either he and Pitch would be long gone, or they would be arrested. Sandy is a well-known and wanted murderer, after all, and Pitch would soon be identified as the Boogeyman killer under such circumstances. Some evidence more or less won't make a difference.

            Sandy adds more detail to the sketch. "He looks rather like the first man you killed, doesn't he?"

            "Yes." Pitch paces back and forth a few times. "I don't want to be common—I swear that I didn't think of the superficial comparisons between him and Len when I realized he was perfect." He frowns. "I don't think I have a _compulsion_  regarding this physical type. No one else I've chosen has looked like this. But no one else has been this perfect. Sandy, I—I understand if you think this is too dangerous. But if I can't hunt him, nothing else will seem worthwhile. Nothing else I offer you can be good. I will be hungry, very hungry, until I can at least try to take this one. There will be more chances for bad luck to find us, that way. Eventually, I, no matter what you do, no matter what you say, will try to take him." Pitch's voice takes on an almost lilting quality. "I would take him like an animal, chase him down with nothing but my body, bring him to the ground and tear his throat out with my teeth." He brings his focus back to the present. "But I don't want to do that. I couldn't offer you his heart that way."

            Sandy nods slowly. "I wasn't going to tell you not to hunt him. There will be less evidence, this time, for one thing, and you have me to help, and this house to come back to. With this house, with me, you need not hunt him as any creature other than yourself."

            Pitch smiles, showing just a little bit of his teeth this time. Despite this, the smile is not quite human, but neither could it be anything else. "This is what he told me when we talked. He lives alone. He recently moved here, away from a smaller town where most of his family and friends are. He's hoping to reconnect with his estranged brother, but they have only met up once, and briefly. He didn't go into why they were estranged, but the meeting didn't go well. He's unhappy about this, and..." Pitch grips the edge of the kitchen island. "I don't know if I could wait for the time it would take to organize a reconciliation, if you see his perfection and decide you also want…"

            "Pitch, that sort of thing deals with too many factors outside of my control. I assume the brother resembles him somewhat. If I feel the need to make his end perfect, upon seeing him, that is what drugs and mirrors are for."

            Pitch sighs in relief. "Good. Now, speaking of drugs, there is one that I would like to use for the hunt itself."

            "Oh? You're not planning to rely entirely on seduction?" Sandy tilts his head.

            "I thought about it." Pitch's hands are nervous and free again. He taps his fingers on the counter in patterns too fast for the eye to follow, and the soft clicking of his nails is the only sound as Sandy waits for him to go on. "But, no, I don't want to rely on seduction. I want to get him into this house before we do anything, and if he doesn't care for what I'm offering, it will be difficult to get close to him again, to hunt him safely. In any case, all other hunters use every advantage they can against their prey. If I wanted there to be a reasonable chance of him getting away, I would be someone entirely different. So." He smiles, lips closed. "I will need something to either make him sleep or prevent him from moving, and I will need your assistance."  
  
*

 

            "Good run," Pitch says, grinning at Nightlight as they jog toward the park's most isolated water fountain. "I almost regret asking you to race; I'll be useless for the rest of the day."

            Nightlight laughs between deep breaths. "You made me work more than I thought I would today. Guess that's good. Do you want to run together on purpose some time? We've just been meeting at random, so far."

            Pitch smiles, lips parted. He’s almost sure he knows Nightlight's schedule better than he does.

            "That sounds good," Pitch says, as they round the curve in the path. "I tend to keep a pretty irregular schedule, myself. Following you would no doubt be good for me."

            Out of the corner of his eye, Pitch sees Sandy approach with the water bottles. Right on time. "Pitch!" he calls, that one word ringing with the harmless cheerfulness that Pitch had a very difficult time believing that anyone took at face value. As if someone could exist entirely without darkness. "I'm so glad I caught you where you won't have to be disappointed for long. That water fountain's messed up." He shook his head disapprovingly while Pitch and Nightlight slowed and checked the fountain where they had expected to get a drink at the conclusion of their run. "Must have been some kids with nothing better to do."

            The fountain, as Pitch expected it to be, was clogged full of mud and leaves. Clearing the debris away would have been messy work, and in any case, none of them standing there had any supplies to actually clean the water spout. 

            It hadn't been children, of course. It had been Sandy, and the gloves he had worn while scooping up the mud were now in some gas station trashcan. 

            "They must have been playing hooky, for them to have done this while we were going round the park," Nightlight says scornfully. "And that was the best fountain in the park, too."

            It really is. That's why Pitch had decided to use the mud instead of damaging the fountain in a more substantial way. Then again, the reason it's the best fountain is that no one ever uses it. It's meant to provide a place to drink not only for the running path but also for a small picnic area just behind a line of trees. This picnic area has never been used in all the time Pitch has been coming to the park. It's small, has only two tables of rather splintery looking wood, and there's rather more bare dirt than vegetation of any sort, even weeds, surrounding those tables.

            On a gray, early morning in November, there's certainly not going to be anyone there. Even the parking lot is seldom used, with grassy cracks marking the asphalt more clearly than its faded white lines. Sandy’s car is probably the only one that’s parked there in months. 

            "Anyway, I was a little early when I saw what had happened," Sandy says, "so I decided to go quickly and get some bottled water. Looks like it's a good thing that I got some extra."

            "Thank you," says Pitch, taking a bottle from Sandy with a smile that, while true in its affection, is not the sort of smile that comes easily to his face, and he knows that Sandy would probably be laughing at him if he didn't have such control over his own expression.

            Nightlight takes the obvious hint, and before he's left hanging for too long wondering if he should say anything, Pitch smoothly introduces Sandy as his partner. Nightlight introduces himself to Sandy, and after their handshake Sandy passes him a bottle of water, which he gratefully accepts.

            He drains half the bottle in one long swallow. "Thanks man, you're a lifesaver."

            It’s dangerous, the way Sandy and Pitch's eyes immediately meet after such a statement—or it would have been, if they were amateurs. If Nightlight hadn't already drunk most of his water, not noticing the hole near the seam in the plastic made by a very thin needle. If, in a day, they wouldn't be the only two people to remember this incident. 

            With an effortlessness that Pitch has never been able to understand, much less imitate, Sandy engages in some small talk with Nightlight, some nonsense about running in which he becomes rather self-deprecating. It doesn't aid Pitch's patience while he waits for the drugs to work. His Sandy, his sun-god, is perfect, and there's no need for him to make himself look foolish before the sacrifice Pitch is going to give him. But, what he's saying is typical. No doubt boring to Nightlight. His brain is already filling in all the gaps that might be there. No doubt he’s filled them in all the way to arranging a time to run with Pitch tomorrow. 

            Or, at least, no doubt he  _had_ been doing that, before he notices something odd. Nightlight stumbles over nothing while shifting his feet, and frowns. "Sorry, Sandy," he interrupts. "Do you think we could go sit on the bench? I feel kind of weird."

            "Are you all right?" Sandy asks, all concern, as he follows Nightlight to the green-painted bench. The concern is, well, real, but the tone isn't and it's of course not for the reason Nightlight might guess it is—normal human compassion for another. No, Nightlight's desire to sit is a perfectly expected reaction to the cocktail of drugs in the water bottle—a paralytic, an anesthetic, and a strong sedative. However, while Pitch had been able to give Sandy a fairly accurate assessment of Nightlight's weight, he hadn't been able to provide any knowledge regarding any allergies to medications Nightlight might have. And while it's true that allergies to the drugs Sandy used are rare, well—Nightlight is a rare specimen himself. 

            If Nightlight died in public a whole host of other things could go wrong, and neither Pitch nor Sandy wished for his death to be so accidental. So unconscious. His meat would still be useful, but Pitch would not be fully satisfied. It was not only not ideal, but also potentially dangerous to their harmony with each other, at least for a time, and at least until other good sacrifices obscured the pain of losing Nightlight to such ridiculous circumstances.

            To prevent this, Sandy carried an epi-pen in his pocket. As well as the sort of restraints that could hold someone suffering from anaphylactic shock still until they could be more securely bound using the materials in the trunk. 

            Fortunately, though, Nightlight doesn't show any signs of breathing difficulties, or at least none of the kind that are associated with an allergic reaction. Pitch allows himself a little smile, one of his true smiles, at the pair on the bench.

            Nightlight doesn't even notice. 

            "I...I think there's something wrong with my legs," Nightlight says. "They feel like they're going numb, and I don't know if I'd feel safe walking on them now." He sounds worried, but is he worried enough for the next stage of the plan? Well, he's a runner, and his legs have been affected. Of course he will be. 

            Sandy looks up at Pitch, all wide-eyed concern, as if he has no idea what's going to happen next. 

            As if he has no idea that they'll soon be home.

            The thoughts this idea inspires aren't ones suitable for the current moment, dressed as he is in thin running clothes and while Nightlight's still lucid. In any case, it's now time for him to take a more active part in the hunt. "Nightlight," he says, stepping closer to the bench, "I know you joked about pushing yourself to beat me in our impromptu race, but are you sure you didn't push yourself  _too_  hard? I know that you're young, but..." His tone isn't right. He's too eager. Sandy notices, no doubt. He sees it in the slightest flicker of utter, perfect wildness in Sandy's expression. 

            That never would have happened before he met Sandy. Sandy had always been utterly perfect in his control, before. He needed to be, because it was perfection that he loved, perfection that he created, perfection that he offered. Only in Pitch had he learned to conceive of a perfection of wildness. It makes Pitch want to kiss him until he bleeds to know that he's had this influence on Sandy. To know that just as he's become more himself, more the creature that was always within him since being with Sandy, so Sandy has also become more perfect in himself. A god who allows himself to relish the blood he demands. 

            "Do you have any other symptoms?" Sandy asks. His voice is deeper, now, and Pitch takes a cold, calming breath through his nose. "I'm a doctor, and the sudden onset of this weakness worries me."

            Nightlight frowns. As he might well do. Sandy had hardly presented himself with the authority of a doctor in his introduction. "I..." Nightlight shakes his head. "I feel sleepy. Sluggish. Confused? Oh, god, am I having a stroke?"

            "Help me get him to the car, Pitch," Sandy says. "We need to get him to the hospital and I don't want to wait for an ambulance."

            Pitch does most of the heavy lifting as they make their way to Sandy's car—lifting that gets heavier by the moment as Nightlight's voluntary muscle control fails further. Sandy walks alongside, holding his hand and saying meaningless words of comfort over Nightlight's worries. By the time the back door of the car is open, Nightlight's speech has mostly gone, replaced by drowsy, inarticulate noises of fear. 

            Pitch can hardly let go of him to arrange him safely on the backseat.

            Sandy slides an arm around his waist. "I'll go see if we left anything behind," he says softly. "You stay here." 

            Pitch nods and gives him a grateful look before turning back to Nightlight. Beautiful, beautiful Nightlight. His head is turned to the side, his breathing shallow and steady, his eyes closed to slits. It's dangerous for Pitch like this, he knows. He might be able to explain himself to someone who wasn't Sandy, even now, but only barely, and not well. An experienced person would never believe that he was acting like this because of his shock at the sudden medical emergency his running partner was experiencing.

            But there are no observers here. Only him and Nightlight. Only the hunter and his prey. Only—

            He hears the approach of footsteps and whirls around before he can identify them. What does his face look like? He doesn't know.

            It doesn't matter. The footsteps are Sandy's, as he returns from the muddied fountain and bench. "Nothing to see," he says. "Nothing to be looked for. The only thing amiss is the mud in the fountain, and that, of course, was a childish prank."

            Pitch grins at Sandy. "Let's go home, shall we?"

            "Of course." He takes in Pitch's posture, how he can't quite seem to fully turn away from Nightlight. "Do you want to sit in the backseat?"

            Pitch would be ashamed of his eagerness were it displayed for anyone other than Sandy. 

            In order to fit comfortably, Pitch has to drape Nightlight's legs over his lap. He had thought briefly of holding his head and shoulders, but he knew he would not be able to keep his fingers from exploring such significant portions of the young man's flesh, and he wanted Sandy to be able to watch him as he did so. For now, though, even his legs...Pitch curls his hand around the smooth, swooping curve of Nightlight's calf, running the length of it, wishing that it wasn't covered by Under Armour, wishing to see his skin, wishing to see the muscles beneath, wishing to select the perfect cuts to take the meat, meat he could use to make a rich, long-cooking stew, something that would perfume his and Sandy's house all day before they warmed their bellies with it in the evening.

            His mouth is watering, and he swallows, letting his hand move higher, caressing the dense solidity of Nightlight's thigh. Nightlight is lean enough that much of him could be eaten raw. 

            Sandy stops the car at a traffic light and glances back at Pitch, just as he slowly strokes Nightlight's inner thigh and his stomach growls loudly. Sandy catches his eyes in the rearview mirror and licks his lips, ever so slightly. He gives Pitch a wink. "Don't tempt me to speed," he says, just before returning his attention to the road. 

            Pitch lets out a very soft huff of laughter. No, speeding wouldn't do at all, not when they had Nightlight like this. "That would never be my intent," he says in a low voice. And it's true. He's learned how to balance his innate impatience with a knowledge of what practical measures must be taken to reach his goals—mostly because he spends his days working towards what he actually wants, now.

            He takes slow, steadying breaths while Sandy takes a less-used route to their house—but he doesn't stop his hands from petting and stroking every bit of Nightlight's legs that he can reach.  
  
*

 

            The house Pitch and Sandy share is unremarkable in its suburban neighborhood, and as such, has a garage. As soon as traffic decreases around them, thus bringing the chances that someone might choose to make some trouble about Nighlight in the backseat down to practically zero, transporting him to the basement becomes incredibly easy. 

            This house and its garage have made much easy for Pitch and Sandy over the past few years, and suburban detachment can't even be blamed. They've hosted a Christmas party, and a couple summer barbecues, and Sandy always says hi to anyone he meets while walking down to the corner to get the mail. But the fact of the matter is that for the vast majority of people, there's no need to check where the Christmas roast or the bratwurst on the grill came from, and if it comes up in conversation that the house is entirely in Pitch's name, it's easy to assume that Pitch bought it on his own to avoid any discrimination that he and Sandy might have faced if they had gone house hunting as a couple, rather than the fact that, of the two of them, Pitch is the one who hasn't been arrested for and convicted of over ten murders.

            And as long as the lawn is mowed and the sidewalks shoveled, no one will think to question the assumptions they've made. 

            Most people think they would recognize predators like Pitch and Sandy if they saw them, and they would, except that Sandy knows that as well, and knows the vital importance of camouflage. If people can be given a good excuse to think that their neighbors are not cannibalistic serial killers, they will usually take it at once. And if the mask of normality slips? Well, a little hand-holding will usually take care of that. The more progressive neighbors will wonder if latent, lingering homophobia has made them uncomfortable, and turn their scrutiny on themselves. The less progressive—there's nothing latent about it, and, well—if they're distracted by the thought that their neighbors have had living cocks in their mouths before, they won't give a thought to whether dead flesh has been in the same location. 

            And then there was one more factor. Sandy had frequently had the opportunity to observe people who believed that they were breaking a number of very serious rules, whether society's or their own. It always caused them tremendous unhappiness and stress, as well as many, many markers of guilt in their behavior. He had observed, in addition to this, that whether or not the suffering person's violation was trivial or not, their behavior always invited suspicion from those who assumed that they had assessed their own guilt correctly. And so the secret was, as Sandy had told Pitch, to act—and to  _believe_ —that one had the complete and utter right to do whatever one was doing. 

            ("And you," Sandy had whispered to a rapt Pitch while afternoon light fell like thin blades through his closed office blinds, "deserve whatever it is you most desire.")

            So when Sandy drives into the garage as if he is doing nothing more unusual than coming back from going grocery shopping, no one in the neighborhood will assume otherwise.  
  
*

 

            Pitch holds Nightlight upright while Sandy unlocks the basement door, feeling his breathing against his own chest. While it would be easy to slaughter him while he's still under the influence of the drugs, Sandy had admitted that he didn't know how they would affect flavor, not having tasted those he brought to perfection before meeting Pitch.

            The problem, then, is that when Nightlight wakes up, he will most likely be afraid. Pitch has acquired quite a refined palate in the safety of his and Sandy's home. He would like to avoid the physical taste of fear, if he could. Especially as regards Nightlight. 

            The solution Sandy has offered is this: they will allow the drugs currently in Nightlight's body to wear off entirely. He will no doubt wake, then, and he will no doubt be afraid. Pitch approves of this part of the plan heartily, for he very much wishes to see Nightlight living and moving one more time before the sacrifice. He will ask Nightlight a few questions, and then, well. No matter how afraid he is, he must fall asleep sometime—perhaps with the aid of a mild sedative, it's true—but Sandy knows the metabolization rate for the one that will be used. It's likely that even after the chemical influence has worn off, Nightlight will remain asleep.

            That is when Pitch will kill him, and that is when Sandy must only be an observer. He'd talked it over with Sandy, a little while after calming down from his first thrill at having found Nightlight, at having Sandy's agreement that he would help take him. He is killing for Sandy, and though the task is much more pleasure than work for both of them, it is still the keystone action of the whole process, the whole sacrifice, and he will do it with his hands, with his chosen instruments. 

            And because this is not Sandy's kill, there will be none of the theater that Sandy uses when he works alone. Nightlight will not believe he has lived a perfect day before he dies, unless this is what he dreams of in his last moments. 

            The purpose of this endeavor is not to help Nightlight in that way. The purpose of this is to feed Sandy, and himself, with the most perfect flesh he has yet found. 

            He adjusts Nightlight in the modified dentist's chair, aware that his breathing is heavier than it should be, even after carrying another person down the stairs, and aware that Sandy knows this, too. But Sandy only goes to check the lock, and then, the sharpness of the knives and other instruments. Only one will be necessary to kill Nightlight, but they should all be in order, anyway. 

            Soon, Nightlight is securely bound in padded restraints that won't bruise him when he struggles—Pitch would not have chosen someone who wouldn't struggle, but this made it necessary to take precautions. He nods with satisfaction and steps back. 

            "He should wake within an hour," Sandy says. "Are there any further preparations we should make?"

            Pitch pauses, then shakes his head. He turns to Sandy with a true smile, and embraces him tightly. "You know that despite anything I might say to Nightlight, you are always superior, always superlative, yes? You are my sun god, always, and this sacrifice is for you, and because of this—it is an honor almost beyond imagining that you will allow me to share in the feast I am providing for you. My initial impulses were selfish, of course—I wanted to take his perfection into myself. But now, now I understand..." he trails off uncharacteristically, and Sandy tilts his head up to lightly kiss him on the lips.

            "I understand, too," Sandy says. "I understand what it means for you to offer Nightlight first for me. Hearing you say so is almost, I daresay, as satisfying as the young man himself." He reaches up and rests one hand on the back of Pitch's neck. "For my sake, you must have as much of him as you desire." He stands on his tiptoes to whisper in Pitch's ear. "Sate yourself on him, my love."

            Pitch shivers, nods solemnly, and gives Sandy a fierce kiss before returning to the raised chair where Nightlight sleeps, to stand vigil until he wakes.   
  
*

 

            When Nightlight does wake up, he doesn't panic immediately. Perhaps this is due to the lingering effects of the drugs, or to the superficial similarities between his current location and where he expected to wake up, if he woke up at all. The dentist's chair used to be legitimately medical, after all, Pitch notes, watching intently as Nightlight's beautiful blue-green eyes open slightly. The restraints—either he doesn't notice them or thinks they're to protect him in case of a seizure. Pitch has a suspicion that that's not currently recommended, but he also vaguely recalls seeing such a procedure in a television show not too long ago. Nightlight might not have a more reliable source of information. 

            As for his surroundings—well, he can't see the cement floor. The clear plastic curtains hung in front of white walls are rather strange, but they don't generally indicate that he's in someone's basement. The bright light above him will obscure the ceiling, a generic white paint-textured thing.

            It's no wonder that it takes him some time to come to his senses and even start to worry. 

But, start to worry he does, as soon as his eyes find Pitch. As soon as he realizes he's still wearing the clothes he collapsed in. As soon as he realizes he's not in anything like a hospital.

            "What the hell?" he asks, his voice creaking, as he pulls against the arm restraints. "What the  _fuck!"_ he exclaims, finding his feet and legs are also bound. He takes a deep breath through his nose, and turns toward Pitch. "Okay. So I guess I wasn't having a stroke. And this is…your basement, right? Actually—no. Don't tell me. I don't need to know. This is pretty fucked up, but if you let me go right now, I'll leave and act like this never happened."

            Pitch smiles and steps closer. "No, Nightlight. And ruin all the hard work Sandy and I put in to make this happen? When would I ever encounter someone as perfect as you again?"

            Nightlight's eyes narrow in concentration as he tries to make this situation fit some sort of comprehensible narrative. Pitch suspects he's going to guess wrong, and his suspicion proves correct. "All right," Nightlight says, with a nervous, dry swallow. "This is even more fucked up. But let me out of this chair, I won't do anything. You and your boyfriend can do whatever you want. I'll do whatever you want, and I swear I'll never say anything, ever, so long as I get to go home in one piece. That's—got to be better, right? And if you let me go, that's less trouble for you. Right? Right?"

            "Perhaps if Sandy and I were amateurs," Pitch says in a low voice. "However, you've gotten the entirely wrong idea of what we want to do with your body."

            "You're professionals?" Pitch is a bit surprised that this is what he chooses to focus on. But there's much to be said for the delayed reveal, so he lets Nightlight continue. "Someone hired you? Who? I think I could outbid them, I mean, I don't know anyone that really has money, but..." he trails off and frowns. 

            "But it doesn't really add up, does it?" Pitch asks. "I'm afraid I was using the imprecise meaning of the word amateur just now. I meant it to be opposed to 'expert' rather than 'professional'."

            Now Pitch sees fear in his eyes. A pure fear, a simple fear, that the unknown  _thing_  is going to destroy one's body. Nightlight's voice doesn't tremble when he next speaks, however, though Pitch can tell he manages it only through very careful control.

            "What do you want with me?" he asks.

            "Nightlight," Pitch says, moving so that he stands fast by the chair. He places a hand on his shoulder and slowly strokes down along his bicep, enjoying the feel of the hot muscle under his palm. "You are one of the most perfect young men I have ever encountered," he tells him. "Your body, your spirit, your mind—in our short acquaintance you have struck me as exceptional in all these aspects. Your qualities are intensely desirable, even to the degree that they make you a worthy sacrifice for my beloved, and for me, a boon beyond all imagining." He fixes Nightlight with his gaze. "We're going to eat you," he says. He squeezes Nightlight's arm and goes to get the scissors.

            "What? What? No no no no no. You can't be serious, that's crazy, that's—hey, what are you doing, no! Stay back!" He thrashes in the chair and Pitch frowns.

            "Sandy," he says. "I believe I will need your help holding him down as I cut off his clothes."  
  
*

 

            Between the two of them, they manage to remove all of Nightlight's clothing without leaving so much as a scratch on him. Throughout the process, Nightlight keeps talking—pleading, Pitch assumes. He's not paying attention, and Sandy doesn't react to it either, so he concludes that it can't be very important. 

            When they're finished, Sandy carries the piles of clothes to the bin next to their old-fashioned incinerator, and Pitch contemplates Nightlight, bare, before him. He really is as beautiful as he assumed, based on what his running clothes revealed. Quite lean, of course, but he will be able to make a luxurious feast of him all the same. Pitch reaches out a hand and places it on Nightlight's thigh. Yes, this will do nicely, after the ecstasy of the raw heart and the blood. As he had thought in the car...let him simmer, let him stew, let him roast, let the smell of his flesh pervade the temple where his sun-god lives until no one might enter and but be ravenous.

            He removes his hand from Nightlight's thigh and places it just below his ribs. "I have made a number of assumptions about you," he says, "and normally I don't get much of a chance to confirm them. Based on meeting you while running, and the look of your body right now, I would presume that you're in very good health. Your strength while struggling bolsters that assumption."

            Nightlight's staring at him with an open mouth. He doesn't volunteer anything, and Pitch supposes that makes sense. 

            "Are you in good health?" Pitch asks. "I don't need to know about congenital defects. I'm mostly interested in diseases."

            "Why the fuck would I tell you that?"

            Pitch pauses. He considers Nightlight's question like any legitimate inquiry. "Because you are definitely going to die here," he says calmly. "I am definitely going to kill you and eat you, sharing your meat with my lover. Your answer does not affect this outcome. It will only make a difference in the methods I will use to prepare you for consumption. And you are so lovely..." He draws his hand slowly up Nightlight's sternum to rest loosely around his trembling throat, feeling the frantic pulse against his palm. He licks his lips and looks directly into Nightlight's eyes. "I think you deserve to be eaten raw." He blinks, and looks away, his eyes leisurely making their way over Nightlight's body. "But you are already a glorious sacrifice, and the nourishment and pleasure you will provide us are already incalculable. I will not risk Sandy's health by asking him to participate in my riskier practices if I can obtain no information on exactly how risky they are."

            "Pitch," Sandy says quietly, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I didn't realize what considerations hung upon his invisible health. If you have the patience, I could sample his blood and in a day or two have the results for everything sufficiently common and dangerous."

            Pitch smiles tenderly at Sandy. "Thank you, but I do not wish to prolong Nightlight's stay here." 

            Sandy inclines his head, and steps away again. 

            Pitch turns back towards Nightlight. "You see," he says, "your time is short."

            "Then it makes no difference whether I tell you or not," Nightlight says. "I won't. Why would I want to make things better for the person about to murder me?"

            This question Pitch does interpret as rhetorical. "Do you have what I thought we might need?" he asks Sandy.

            "I've just prepared it." Sandy approaches Nightlight from where he can't see him, and passes Pitch a syringe. Pitch can't remember the exact name of the substance contained within, but he knows it's some kind of barbiturate, and that within the hour Nightlight should be far more gregarious. 

            Nightlight swears richly as the needle penetrates his skin, but Pitch hardly notices, not while Sandy's golden hands are firmly holding Nightlight's arm in place, not while a drop or two of hypnotically red blood drifts back into the cylinder of the syringe. Pitch is panting when he withdraws the needle from Nightlight's vein. Sandy looks him over with one part analytical curiosity and one part vicarious thrill. After a minute, when Nightlight has once again lost consciousness, he steps closer to Pitch and reaches out to cup his erection through his pants. 

            "Sandy," Pitch says softly, as Sandy moves his hand slowly over his clothed cock.

            "Pitch," Sandy murmurs. "You've been utterly desperate since we brought Nightlight down here. The light's good enough, I wouldn't be surprised if he noticed, despite the poor angle of the chair. It's no wonder he guessed wrong about what we wanted from him. But maybe I've been guessing wrong, too. Oh, you've been quite sensual with your beautiful sacrifice, but despite your arousal, you haven't been very sexual with him. Have I been wrong, then, to think that you wanted to get off with him? Though you are so very, very hard."

            "Preparation for you," Pitch says, his voice low and hoarse. "Nightlight arouses me because he is the perfect sacrifice and I can offer him to you. He arouses me because you've told me I can consume as much of his perfection as I wish, though you are the sun-god. He arouses me because he is mine, and I am in control. But he doesn't arouse me because I want to have sex with him. He arouses me because his presence, killing him, eating him and feeding him to you..." he shivers. "It's all for you."

            "Ah," says Sandy, pressing more firmly against him. "When you put it that way, I've no idea how I could have misunderstood. And I thought I knew you so well."

            "You do," Pitch insists.

            "Hmm. Perhaps, then, I have found a lingering trace of a wound in myself, an uncomfortable knowledge of how the world would compare me with that young man over there."

            "Nothing but blindness," Pitch says. His hips twitch towards Sandy's hand. "I don't think anyone who saw us truly could but agree that we are perfectly suited to each other."

            Sandy's laugh is low and dark. "In that I agree, my dear." He offers Pitch one of his eerily symmetrical smiles. "We have a little less than ten minutes before he awakes. You must be terribly uncomfortable by now, and I'd like to give you some relief."

            "I'd rather not come in my running clothes," Pitch says. "Though you seem to have that as your goal."

            "Oh, no," Sandy says. "As I said, I don't want you to be uncomfortable as you work. I'll give you my mouth." He rests his fingertips against the waistband of Pitch's pants. "I think we can make that nice and clean and quick, can't we? As long as it won't upset you to see me kneel before you in this context."

            "Sandy, please," Pitch says. "No, it won't alter anything." There's a dark red stain on his sallow cheeks. "And I will be quick."

            Sandy doesn't even pause to kiss him before sinking to his knees.

 

*

 

            "Where'd Sandy go?" Nightlight asks, some minutes later. 

            Pitch smiles at him, rather more clear-headed now, and quite comfortable in his newly readjusted clothing. Nightlight appears much less frightened, and much more garrulous, if his volunteering of this question is anything to judge by. "He went to get something to drink," Pitch says. 

            "Oh," Nightlight says, instantly uninterested. "I feel weird again. You drugged me again. But I'm awake again! That's not what I expected. I thought you were serious about killing me and eating me."

            Pitch chooses not to correct him.

            "Anyway. I don't know what you're really planning, but anything else I can probably recover from, right? That's one of my philosophies. That's why I moved here. Had a big fight with my brother. Thought he had to go far far away to be his own person. Don't know what I did wrong."

            "Perhaps he saw that he'd never live up to your perfection." Pitch's eyes dart to the knife he's going to use. He'll still have to wait some time for Nightlight to sleep after he gets the answer he's looking for, but it does no harm to check, to envision the sharp steel drawing across Nightlight's neck. 

            Pitch takes a deep breath. It would be no good for him to get all wound up again. But he wants to get things moving, not chat with Nightlight about his family troubles. He's never understood how Sandy finds that sort of thing so satisfying.

            "Hmmmm," Nightlight says, drawing out the m sound. "Y'know, Jack said something funny like that when he kicked me out of his apartment a few weeks ago. Something about, he couldn't love me the way he was supposed to. He wouldn't explain what he meant and then he was gone. It took me two years to find out that he was living here, and that's how he ended our meeting? But he always did weird stuff. Said the weirdest things when we were kids...that he wished we were one person...but, like, he was really clear about not wishing that either of us was dead, or that we had been born a singleton...he just wanted to be one person somehow."

            "Pardon me, Pitch, but would you mind terribly if I attempted to get the contact information for this brother?" Sandy says quietly, having seemingly appeared at Pitch's side out of nowhere. "It seems as though there are some fascinating, irresolvable conflicts there."

            "Please do. It might make him more inclined to answer questions than just ramble. And I—this twin is perfect for me to give to you, and I think you should be able to find out if the other is one that you can bring to perfection."

            "Thank you," Sandy murmurs, and squeezes his hand.

            Pitch inclines his head, and steps away to inspect some of the equipment he'll be using in not too long. 

            "Sandy, you're back!" Nightlight says. "Don't know why I didn't see you."

            "Quite all right," Sandy says. "I heard you talking about your brother, Jack, was it? He shares your last name, doesn't he?"

            Pitch half-listens to the conversation as he goes through a mental checklist of his equipment. The knife—he always knows where the knife is. The heavy hook from which Nightlight will hang upside down. The rope to tie his feet together and hang him there. The clean, tiny kiddie pool that will catch the vast majority of Nightlight's blood. 

            Some of it, with a cut like Pitch wants to make, will spray out on Pitch, and Sandy if he's standing close. He feels his cock start to stir again at that; seeing Sandy covered in someone else's blood is so rare, and Sandy has always been so wonderfully serene, painted in red. To see Nightlight's blood on him—well, Pitch never need worry about being cold again. 

            "So, are you in good health?" Sandy asks, conversationally. Pitch looks back and sees that he's produced a clipboard and pen from somewhere.

            "You're really a doctor, huh?"

            "Yes," Sandy says. "Don't you remember from earlier?"

            Pitch moves to a spot in the room where he can see Nightlight's expressions more easily. What's happening here? He sees Nightlight think hard for a moment or two.

            "Maybe," he says. "I kind of forget a lot other than Pitch telling me you were going to kill me and eat me."

            Sandy smiles, and Pitch's breath quickens. So this was a trap for Nightlight. 

            "That's in line with the previous data," Sandy says.

            Pitch frowns in puzzlement, and so does Nightlight. But Nightlight's expression clears first. "This is a  _study_ ," he says, as if it’s the most profound thing he's ever realized. 

            Sandy's smile becomes more avuncular, less his own. "I have your consent form right here, with your signature in black and white. You're doing the world a great deal of good regarding lucid surgery, Nightlight," he says. "We had a hell of a time coming up with an approved scenario that would provide the same amount of stress as an abdominal operation."

            "Doesn't telling me this void the data?" Nightlight asks.

            Sandy waves his hand. "We've passed the peak of both stress and drug influence, and now we're mostly interested in your memory. Comparing answers you give now to answers you gave prior to the effects of stress and the drugs." He looks down at the clipboard and flips a sheet of paper on it. "We're asking the same kinds of questions it might be important to get someone to confirm within a surgical situation. Of course we have your answers from before, but we need to see if you give the same answers now. So. Are you in general good health?"

            "Yes," Nightlight answers, apparently on solid ground again, though Pitch knows he's still heavily under the influence of the injection that got him talking in the first place.

            "Have you ever received a dura mater—brain membrane—transplant?" Sandy asks, his voice neutral to the point of boredom now. 

            "No," Nightlight says.

            Pitch tilts his head and watches Sandy work, fascinated. He usually hunts alone, and when Sandy wants to take a victim according to his own methods—something he now realizes has happened only twice since he broke Sandy out of police custody—he hasn't watched. He's impatient, and it would interfere with Sandy's methods to have a figure like Pitch lurking around the edges of the room. So now, while he knew Sandy was a wonderful actor in putting on an ordinary face for the world, he hadn't realized how far those skills could be pushed. 

            He wonders, first, if he would notice if Sandy was acting for him. He wonders, second, if the reason Sandy has made so few kills of his own is because Pitch is his current, long-term project. After all, he has made Pitch's life pretty much perfect. Has he shortened his life by going on about Nightlight's perfection? 

            "Thank you Nightlight, that will be all," Sandy says. He smiles over at Pitch and Pitch decides he doesn't care at all.

            Sandy nods to Pitch and with a very slight hand gesture, he motions toward Nightlight. "Perfectly healthy," he whispers in Pitch's ear as Pitch steps forward into Nightlight's view again. "I'll be ready with the injection to make him sleep at your signal."

            Nightlight laughs nervously when he focuses on Pitch again. "Man, that was...that was sure something, before. I don't think I'm going to sign up for one of these again. Are you going to untie me now? It's kind of cold and I'd like to put my clothes back on..." Nightlight suddenly frowns. "I remember you cutting them off. Those were good running clothes. If this was a study, are you going to pay for...Did you really cut them off?"

            Pitch steps forward next to Nightlight and gives him a toothy smile. "We really did cut them off," he says. He licks his lips and goes on. "And what's more, this isn't really a study." He reaches out and strokes his fingers along Nightlight's jaw, bending his lips towards Nightlight's ear. "And we really are going to kill you and eat you."

            With his inhibitions lowered by the drug, and more people likely to be home at this time of day on their lunch break, Nightlight begins to make a possibly dangerous amount of noise. He also turns his head to try to bite Pitch, which is honestly quite thrilling, even if he escapes quite easily—Nightlight is not fully dedicated to the action, and Pitch is sober and much faster than him. 

            "Oh, you really are perfect," he murmurs from a distance just this side of safe, before standing up straight and turning to Sandy. "The neighbors will think we have hearing problems, but would you go up and turn the television to something plausible?"

            Sandy nods, and in moments Pitch and Nightlight are alone in the basement. "Thankfully, we won't have to have noise cover for very long," Pitch says. "When Sandy comes back, we'll be putting you under again. This time, you won't be waking up, so if you have anything coherent to say that you feel you must, I suggest you do so now."

            "You're going to kill me while I'm knocked out?" Nightlight says, startled out of his yelling. "Why?"

            "Because otherwise you will be afraid, and the chemicals in your body released when you are afraid will damage the taste of your flesh. Aren't you glad that I have no desire for your fear at the moment of death? I wasn't always so picky."

            Nightlight stares at him. "This is really about being a cannibal, isn't it?"

            "That is an extremely foolish question to ask at this point, I think. I've told you twice. I'm going to eat you." Fascinating, to say that out loud, to watch the beautiful face of his sacrifice think about it. "None of you will be wasted."

            "I'm such a crunchy-granola freak that almost made me feel better for a second," Nightlight says. "Look. I don't think I can get out of this. I don't even know if I can mess up your plans for me. But...right. You want to eat me, and you don't intend to get caught. You don't care about, like, torture and despair."

            Well. This is far more interesting than yelling.

            "So, I don't know how long you and your boyfriend have been up to this, and I don't want to know. But you're probably good at not getting caught. And maybe it's because you ignore this kind of request. But. I want you to leave enough of me, somewhere, so that my family can know I'm dead. I don't want them to think I did the same thing as Jack. I don't want them to waste time wondering."

            "A steep request," Pitch says. "And a noble one. I would have suspected nothing less of you." He pauses. "I will consider this challenge, and inform Sandy of it. He enjoys puzzles, and hates leaving loose ends."

            Nightlight doesn't say anything, and Pitch considers that he may be thinking about the fact that he gave his brother's address, earlier. It's smart of him to not remind Pitch of that, but, again, he and Sandy are not amateurs. Jack's fate is no longer in Nightlight's hands.

            Sandy returns from upstairs, then, and gives Pitch a mildly surprised look at Nightlight's silence. "I suppose screaming is an unpleasant way to spend one's last conscious moments," he says. 

            Nightlight glares at them both. "Fuck you," he says, then shuts his mouth tightly. 

            Concise, to the point, and defiant to the end. Pitch nods in approval. Appearing thus appears to be taking its toll on Nightlight. His jaw is tense, his eyes shine with unshed tears, and his beautiful body, now covered in gooseflesh, quivers ever so slightly. The first drug must have worn off entirely by now. Good. His terror is exquisite, and it means it is now safe for the injection of the drug that will make him sleep.

            "Sandy?" Pitch says. "If you would help me hold his arm steady, again."  
  
*

 

            Once Nightlight is deeply under, looking much more peaceful, now, Sandy goes back upstairs and turns off the television. Nothing that will follow will be particularly noisy.

            Pitch attaches the hook to the ceiling and ties Nightlight's ankles together. He loosens the arm restraints, enough to fully restore any restricted blood flow, but also keeps them tight enough to slow Nightlight down if he isn't quite so deeply asleep as he seems.

            The pool is nearby, ready. So, too, is the knife. Pitch picks it up. It's been freshly sharpened, and Pitch thinks that even if Nightlight was sleeping normally, there would be a good chance that he might not wake before it was far, far too late, if at all. But a good chance is not a guarantee, and Pitch does not want Nightlight to be afraid anymore. 

            He wants Nightlight's blood in his mouth, Nightlight's heart between his teeth. He wants to watch Sandy's lips close around raw bloody flesh and move into a beautiful, eerie smile. He closes his eyes and swallows against a suddenly dry throat. On stiff legs, he returns the knife to its place on the table, and backs away from Nightlight.

            "How much longer must I wait?" Pitch asks when he can hear Sandy coming down the stairs.

            "I believe Nightlight will be in his deepest, calmest sleep in half an hour," Sandy says. "How do you wish to pass this time? Would you like me to remain down here with you, or return upstairs to start preparing the parts of the first meal we make of him that will not simply be his flesh?"

            Pitch's stomach growls. He doubts he'll be able to eat anything other than Nightlight himself for days, but his Sandy is of a more refined strain. Care must be taken with the sacrifice Pitch offers him. "We should both go upstairs to work on preparation. I would like to do the work. You should direct me."

            Sandy raises his eyebrows ever so slightly. "I'll be glad to, my dear."  
  
*

 

            Sandy had expected, with Nightlight waiting in the basement, that Pitch would be more distracted, more excitable than usual. He couldn't have been more wrong. Pitch cuts vegetables with the confidence and precision of a surgeon, measures ingredients with the instincts of a chef and, when necessary, with the exactitude of a chemist. As they draw near to the end of preparations that can be done ahead of time, Sandy has grown to understand quite well that this is what he  _should_  have expected. Nightlight has already been hunted. What remains for Pitch's focus is the preparation of the sacrifice for Sandy, and that includes this work in the kitchen, this means by which Pitch accommodates the way in which their savagery differs. Of course he would be calm, now. Of course he would devote himself fully to this preparation. It's not as viscerally exciting as the slaughter of Nightlight will be, but it is part of one and the same process. 

            Sandy directs Pitch to wash the knives, cutting board, and everything else that's been used so far. He stands beside him and dries, smiling up at Pitch's slightly reproachful look. "Would you really want your sun god to be distant?" he asks. "We're well into the window of time to take Nightlight. And, well...we don't want to delay much longer, do we? I think we're both quite hungry." He murmurs this last, and is pleased how Pitch's attention instantly turns toward him.

            Pitch puts the last of the dishes in the drying rack and turns to Sandy. He plucks the dishtowel from his hands and leans down to give him a deceptively gentle kiss. "We stop delaying now," he says. "Come down, and witness."  
  
*

 

            Sandy's drugs work exactly as expected—naturally, as this skill helped him maintain a stellar reputation for a very long time despite the mysterious disappearances of a number of his clients—and Nightlight makes no sign of waking as Pitch hangs him from the hook in the ceiling by the rope tied around his feet. The modified dentist's chair is moved out of the way, and Nightlight's head dangles above the pool. Pitch watches the pulse in his outstretched neck for a moment, savoring his control over that flutter.

            When he can manage to look at something else, he walks over to a chair near where Sandy stands and removes his clothes. In one way, this is practical: it would be no good to risk getting the blood of a murder victim on clothes one intends to wear again. But Pitch is hardly thinking about that. Instead, he's thinking of how, when Nightlight's blood spurts and spatters, he wants the living heat of it to mark his skin, to mark him as the one offering the sacrifice to Sandy. 

            He would like to offer Sandy blood to drink from his hands. 

            Sandy takes a moment to look him up and down, wearing a small but eloquent smile. 

            Pitch inclines his head, returning that small smile. He's well aware that he's already half-hard again, but Sandy's the one who taught him to let go of his shame regarding the reactions that come while he's hunting and killing. And it's always Sandy that he really wants.

            The knife is solid, weighty in his hand, as Pitch stands before Nightlight once again. He watches the pulse beat in Nightlight's neck a few more times, then kneels down on the cold, clean concrete. He carefully grasps a handful of Nightlight's hair, close to his scalp, and pulls his head back, elongating his neck. 

            His other arm moves quickly, forcefully, and at once there is blood jetting out and blood pulsing down. Pitch pulls Nightlight's head back farther, to encourage the blood to fall into the pool, where a great deal of it already accumulates quickly. Still, much sprang from that first cut, and Pitch breathes heavily, feeling every drop of red blood like a brand on his body as it begins to cool. He tries to take one calming breath before he licks his lips but finds it impossible. His tongue flicks out, and this—this is his first taste of Nightlight, just a few drops of blood, with the faint tang of salt, with the bright life-taste in them, the sweet taste of death he has caused. He lets out a small groan. He wants to press his mouth to the gaping slash where the last of Nightlight's hot life drips out. 

            And perhaps he will. But he will not do it alone. "Sandy," he calls in a low, hoarse voice. He hears Sandy immediately approach, and in the few moments it takes him to cross the room, Pitch catches the now-slow trickle of Nightlight's blood in one of his palms.

            Sandy kneels before him, and a little tremor runs through Pitch's shoulders when he sees those strange tawny eyes look up at him. "This is for you," he says, holding out his palmful of blood.

            "Thank you," Sandy says warmly, and reaches forward to lightly hold Pitch's hand at the wrist and fingertips. He bends his head and touches his lips to the blood, sucks and laps at it, eventually using his tongue to clean every drop of red from Pitch's beautiful long hand. When he finishes, Pitch's breaths are shallow pants, his pupils are so wide that his irises have all but vanished, and his cock is so hard as to be nearly painful. Pitch stares at the slight smears of red at the corners of Sandy’s slightly parted lips as he breathes deeply and gives a low hum of satisfaction. Sandy smiles, then, and his smile is so beautiful bloody. Pitch grunts as his cock throbs, and only by a supreme effort of will does he find the words to ask, "Would you like more? From the source?"

            Sandy nods serenely, and he lets Pitch bring the gaping wound of Nightlight's neck between them. If it was one of those foolish inkblot cards, like the one he had kept in a frame in his old office, like the one Pitch had looked at and seen a bloody human heart, Sandy would see here bouquets to out-bloom all the rest, candle-ringed beds of roses and heart-shaped boxes of the finest, rarest chocolates. Such would be only interpretation, however. There is nothing of the smell of roses, here; there is nothing of the taste of chocolate. The textures of the raw inner workings of Nightlight's throat slide and catch curiously against his tongue as he sucks to encourage the flow of blood from severed veins.

            He flicks his eyes open and up to see Pitch, his eyes closed, sucking and biting at his kill, his face relaxed and smeared in red. His beautiful predator, his worshiper, his ghoul. "Pitch," he says, and Pitch lifts his eyes, but not his face. He watches Sandy while his mouth laps at Nightlight's flesh, and Sandy smiles as heat washes through him. Oh, wonderful that Pitch should be. Wonderful that he should be Sandy's. That he should have grown so completely into the devourer he is, that he should have taught Sandy, too, to love the taste of blood, to find his own savagery. "My Pitch," he whispers. "You have given me so much, but I would have one thing more, now."

            "What is it that you want?" Pitch asks, his mouth thick with gore.

            "I would have the man who found and chose this sacrifice in the first place," Sandy says. "I want you, Pitch, and I want you very badly. Let Nightlight drain on his own for a little while. He'll be ready to be butchered when I'm done."

            "Yes," Pitch whispers. "Yes." He lowers Nightlight carefully, and lifts his hand for Sandy to lead him where he will.   
  
*

 

            Pitch presses one forearm into the wall as Sandy fucks him from behind, groaning at the feel of his very fleshly sun-god filling him. He had come very quickly some minutes ago, crying out almost as soon as Sandy had pressed into him, had wrapped one of his soft, precise hands around his aching cock. Still, he's very nearly hard again, with the heavy rhythm of Sandy's thick cock in him, with blood in his belly and on his tongue and on his skin. With Sandy's lovely hands and fingers pressing hard against his hips.

            He pants when Sandy kisses his back, knowing how this action will have left another smear of blood on his skin. He reaches down to stroke himself, and Sandy does not tell him to be patient or wait for his touch, only thrusts into him faster. And it feels good, so good, though Pitch must admit there’s pain with this pleasure; they had perhaps not been as patient as they should have in preparing him. He doesn't care right now, doesn't care as Sandy's hands slide around to stroke his belly, as one joins Pitch's hand on his cock, as Sandy's teeth sink into his shoulder as he comes. 

            It's a quick matter of hands to finish Pitch off a second time after that, especially with Sandy murmuring in his ear about how beautifully virile he has become even after a little taste of blood.   
  
*

 

            After cleaning up as necessary—they both of them leave the blood that has marked them as is, when they can—Sandy helps Pitch move Nightlight to the long stainless steel table for gutting. Sandy gathers such containers as they will need to store the edible organs, while Pitch tends to the blood. They both wear long, heavy aprons now, for the sake of their skins, rather than, in Sandy’s case, for the sake of his clothing. Since kneeling to drink the blood Pitch offered, not to mention fucking his lovely, blood-spattered self without entirely undressing, Sandy has known that he'll have to burn the clothes he's wearing.

            The gutting of Nightlight doesn't take long, relatively speaking, and Pitch performs it with significantly more skill and speed than anything he did when he first met Sandy. The marvels of practice. Pitch had always had it in him to kill, and certainly to eat—that was the goal of the killing in the first place—but he hadn't started out knowing how to do anything but dig for the heart and devour it raw.

            With time to develop his interests, however, and a desire to gain the most from each kill—to draw out his pleasure as a devourer—he had learned an efficiency and something like elegance. Something like elegance, indeed. Pitch cracks Nightlight's ribs open one by one with a freshly sharpened set of garden shears, and, moments later, lifts the heart from its cage.

            No, thinks Sandy. This is not elegance at all. Elegance implies that others are meant to see one's effortless skill and beauty. One is not elegant alone, but Pitch is always the way he is, even when he does not ask me to observe him preparing his kills. The impression is not of elegance. The impression is of ultimate fitness for the task. Upon watching Pitch at work, one cannot but be left with the unshakeable idea that man is meant to hunt man.

            Pitch places Nightlight's heart on a convenient cutting board, and deftly cuts a few very thin slices from it. 

            "For you," he says, holding one out to Sandy. 

            Sandy takes the lean piece of meat reverently, and brings it to his mouth as Pitch does. What beautiful self-restraint he's gained, and Sandy's lost. His eyes flick to the heart after swallowing the morsel. He wants more. He wants more as he's never wanted before, and for the first time, he realizes that Pitch's hunting has given him an appetite that can never be ignored. He realizes he cannot give up the particular nourishment that Pitch provides for them.

            "You taste the life in it," Pitch says, knowing he's right. He found Nightlight, and he's given Sandy Nightlight, and now Sandy understands. Sandy had always understood killing—that desire was not at all alien to him—but the _eating_ , the  _consumption_ , the  _devouring_ : Sandy had not felt for himself the power in this that made the killing seem almost to fade entirely into the background upon each first bite. Even if he had taught Pitch to allow himself to feel this, even if he had eaten with delight what Pitch had prepared for him.

            But now. Now Sandy understands, with this raw and perfect heart. Sandy understands the drive that gives no patience for roasting or simmering, the call that would have him gulping down Nightlight entirely raw, like nothing so much as a starving wolf, the call that yet might also show him more human than ever, as, finally finding something that would restore him and fill him, heal every wound that the world had dealt him, he demands all of it, at once, for surely if he waited, the wounding world would take it away.

            Yes, Sandy feels this now, though perhaps not as strongly as Pitch, for when he had understood this at his first kill, he had cut himself on bones he had broken to get at what he needed, nearly choked on his huge, first blissful bite of that heart.

            Sandy, instead, simply watches with all the attention any hunter ever gave their prey, as Pitch cuts him another slice of this heart. 

They eat all of it like that, the slick muscle disappearing infinitesimally to nothing while Nightlight is opened, emptied, and cleaned.  
  
*

 

            They bring Nightlight's body upstairs when Pitch is done, as well as the container holding his liver. Sandy places this in the refrigerator, then turns to regard Pitch as Pitch regards Nightlight, all white and red, on their custom oversized kitchen island. Nightlight’s face still seems peaceful, as if he's only sleeping, until the eye reaches the gaping slash on his neck and the chasm of his gutted torso. 

            By rights, they should have removed his head by now, but Pitch had shown no indication to do so, and, ultimately, Nightlight is Pitch's. 

            "I'm going to put on some clothes," Pitch says. He looks over at Sandy. "If you would bring out what we've already prepared?" 

            Sandy nods, and Pitch vanishes upstairs. 

            When he returns, he's dressed in black pants and a black button-up shirt, his only adornment the muted gold of his belt buckle. Now,  _this_ is elegance, and he surely intends for Sandy to watch as he deftly rolls up his sleeves. He ties on a new, clean apron and holds another out to Sandy. "Let's butcher him," he says, with a little smile that makes Sandy want to ask if they can take another break, first. He doesn't, though. He has a feeling what Pitch will be like when he's sated on Nightlight, and he knows he ought to save his strength. 

            "Let's," Sandy says, and ties his apron on. 

            Nightlight disappears slowly as they work. He is flayed, jointed, filleted. His hair is singed off the cuts where the skin is to be left on. From other cuts, his minimal fat is trimmed away. The bones that are not to be left in are cracked open for their marrow. Others are saved for stock.

            After one of Nightlight's femurs is removed from his thigh, Pitch scores the skin with his knife and ties it neatly with butcher's twine. He passes the cut to Sandy, who seasons it and places it atop the bed of root vegetables in a roasting dish. This will roast slowly, and be done at an hour reasonable for dinner. 

            Pitch pulls the tenderloins from Nightlight's back, the muscles separating cleanly. He sections out steaks, chops, the cuts that can be cooked quickly, and while he addresses these Sandy helps gather the meat and fat that will become sausage; coarsely chops the shoulder for stew.

            And so Nightlight's silhouette is broken up. Stock bones and marrow bones, the pile of meat for sausage. Limbs now tied as roasts, thick slices of belly for curing. Tenderloins. Chops. Steaks. 

            Some of it gets put away, but not all, not even with the roast already in the oven. This is only to be expected. Pitch wants the opportunity to sate himself, with the meat so fresh. 

            When Sandy closes the refrigerator, butter is already sizzling in a hot, hot skillet.   
  
*

 

            Sandy takes one steak for himself in the course of Pitch's cooking, lingering over each succulent bite, seared on the outside and bloody rare in the center. Pitch has even managed to keep his wits about him enough to provide sautéed mushrooms and a pan sauce made using a little red wine with the meat itself. A glass of this same wine now sits before Sandy on the kitchen island, looking almost black even in the warm golden light of the kitchen.

            He raises it slightly to Nightlight's head. They really should have put it away by now, but...ah well. The windows are closed, and Pitch is really starting to enjoy himself. Oh, this wasn't to say that Pitch hadn't been experiencing pleasure from the very first moment of the hunt, but now, he is less frantic, less desperate. He is more graceful now, smiling more easily as the aroma of cooking meat permeates the room.

            The bare bone on a plate nearby signals another reason for Pitch's comfort, of course. 

And so it goes. This is the way that Pitch becomes an artist. This is the way that everyone becomes an artist, isn't it? Once the most pressing needs are alleviated, talent can be turned to other purposes. No matter that Pitch's needs are rather different from most, and the medium with which he works is rarely even considered as a possibility. He still blooms in the right conditions. Sandy is honored to be his patron when he can. 

            The afternoon passes slow and warm in the kitchen. Music is added. The first bottle of wine runs dry. Sandy brings his sketchbook to the island, and draws with it set where Nightlight's body was taken apart. He draws Nightlight's head, giving it a background of draping cloth. He puts a plate underneath it afterwards, an assertion that this consumption of Nightlight is nothing to be hidden, not within their sanctuary. 

            He sketches Pitch, taking a hacksaw to Nightlight's ribs. He sketches his mouth and teeth, grinning, tearing, or voluptuously open and relaxed. He sketches monsters and sun gods, in all their writhing, uncanny glory.

            And Pitch cooks, and eats, and slowly sips his wine. He brings samples of food to Sandy, and nearly dances through the kitchen to kiss him at other moments. He hums along to the music. He makes a joke about framing the sketch of Nightlight's head. And he eats, and eats, and eats. 

            When Sandy goes to take a short nap before the roast finishes, he makes sure to also make some other preparations for the evening to come.  
  
*

 

            Though Pitch has not dedicated himself to the setting of a scene like Sandy has, he can dress a table on a cold November night with the best. The immaculately white tablecloth shines like the moon underneath the dimmed lights of the dining room chandelier and the pale tapers standing in a pair of silver plated candelabras. The polished serving dishes reflect this light in pinpoints, and the ivory-colored china catches it all in long smears of gold. The vine pattern around the edges of the plates has never seemed to belong as much to some dark, fairytale forest full of wolves as it does tonight. 

            Pitch leads Sandy to the armed chair at the head of the table but remains standing himself to pour them both some wine, and—naturally—to cut the roast. Pitch's hand trembles slightly as he lifts the lid from the dish, as it well might. It really is beautiful, Sandy thinks, and it smells delicious enough to make even one leaving some other feast feel like it was the only thing between them and starvation.

            Pitch carves them both generous slices, adds some autumn vegetables, shining like jewels, to each plate, and then, well. Then it is time to eat. Nightlight's skin is crisp, his meat almost melts on Sandy's tongue, and its salt-sweetness is perfectly complimented by the earthiness of the roots.

            Sandy makes a small hum of pleasure, instantly capturing Pitch's eyes. "You've outdone yourself this time, Pitch. And I want to thank you again for sharing Nightlight with me."

            "I wanted you to understand," Pitch says. "And I...I've realized now that in making sure you are satisfied, I can better find my own satisfaction." He smiles a little. "I know you think of me as quite wild, and perhaps I am. You taught me to be. But I am more like a fairytale wolf than any other kind. Well dressed, and well spoken, and..." He gestures. "Capable of doing much finer things than only ripping someone's throat out." His smile gets wider. "Though I do enjoy that as well. Sharing it, too." He takes a bite of meat. "If you've shown me how to be a monster as well as to put some polish on it...I hope I've been able to make you a little bit more of a monster, too."

            Sandy's smile is entirely uncontrolled. "Oh, you have," he says. "You've fully incarnated your sun-god."

            Pitch laughs softly. "I knew this sacrifice would work miracles," he murmurs.

            Sandy winks, and takes another bite. 

            Pitch eats far more than Sandy as the evening draws on, and Sandy half-seriously wonders to himself where he's putting it all, given how much of Nightlight he already had that afternoon. But if Pitch wants to be sated, let him be sated. Nightlight's flesh will never be this fresh again. 

            When Pitch finally sighs and leans back in his chair, Sandy reaches out and places his hand on his arm. "Do you want me to clean up?"

            Pitch turns half-closed eyes to him. "No," he says. "Let me do this. Nightlight is still my kill. But if you've had enough of him..." He takes a calming breath through his nose. "I hope you're ready to have some of me. I'm not so sleepy as I seem. If you'll go to the bed," he says, his voice dropping, "I'll be there soon. I promise I'll put away Nightlight's head, now."

            Sandy stands and approaches Pitch. He cups one hand around the back of Pitch's neck. "I'll be ready," he says.  
  
*

 

            Upstairs, Sandy removes the plug he's been wearing and makes sure that lubricant, tissues, and towels are all within easy reach. Pitch likes to fuck hard and messily after a kill, and with Nightlight's perfection and just how much of him had vanished down Pitch's throat today, Sandy expects nothing different tonight. 

            He folds up the comforter and puts it on the dresser, to be retrieved when they finally sleep. They'll certainly be warm enough without it for a while, even with the chill outside. 

            When Pitch arrives upstairs, Sandy is sitting on the bed against a large pile of pillows, wearing only a thin robe of blood-red satin.

            Pitch closes the door behind him, tense as a bowstring once more. He gives Sandy a quick once-over, no doubt noticing the effect that the thought of things to come has had on Sandy already. He licks his lips and Sandy smiles at him.

            "I'm all ready for you," Sandy says, and tilts his head. "Ah, Pitch, you've filled me up with Nightlight, you must know I need to be filled by you, as well."

            Pitch doesn't need to be told twice. Sandy hardly gets to enjoy his undressing, so quickly does Pitch discard his clothes, and then, he is on Sandy, greedily pushing his tongue into his mouth as his long-fingered hands push away Sandy's robe and rove over Sandy's plump flesh. 

            Sandy hears the smallest whimper from the back of Pitch's throat and runs his nails down the back of his beautiful monster. Oh, his darling wolf must be desperate, even with the attention given to him earlier. Sandy moves his thigh against Pitch's erection, though it's hardly necessary—Pitch had been already mostly hard when he took his clothes off, and Sandy feels the wetness of precome on his stomach now. He's about to move his thigh away and lie back, spread for Pitch, when Pitch moves back just enough to guide Sandy by touches to his hands and knees. 

            So this is how Pitch wants him tonight, is it? Sandy closes his eyes and bites his lower lip as Pitch sinks into him. His breathing grows heavier as he relaxes into the familiar stretch, his own cock swelling with the feel of Pitch long and hot and hard inside him. 

            He smiles at Pitch's short breath of relief, and braces himself as Pitch's beautiful hands wrap around his hips.   
            Sandy doesn't touch himself, even as Pitch fucks him fast and hard. Pitch always takes care of him, and he's curious to see what he'll do tonight, though the ache between his legs grows more and more insistent. 

            It doesn't take long before Pitch comes for the first time, groaning and stilling with his hips flush against Sandy's rear. "Don't worry," he says hoarsely after a few deep breaths, leaning forward and caressing Sandy's chest and belly with one hand. "I'll do better than that."

            You surely will, Sandy thinks. He grins to himself, noting how Pitch doesn't soften at all before starting to thrust again. It can only be psychosomatic, this virility that Pitch gains from human flesh, but Sandy's not about to question it, much less complain. He may even feel the effects himself, this night.

            Pitch is steadier this time while he fucks Sandy, more focused, more precise. His force is not diminished in the slightest, though, and Sandy allows himself to pant, and moan, and wriggle, and writhe as Pitch brings himself to another orgasm, and Sandy ever closer to desperation. This time, Pitch's orgasm is slower, more drawn out, and Sandy swears he can feel Pitch pulsing inside him as he clenches around his cock. 

            This time, Pitch does withdraw from Sandy, and Sandy turns around, not only to see Pitch, but so Pitch can see what a state he's brought Sandy to. Pitch is flushed, glistening with the sweat of exertion, and Sandy pictures himself rutting up against him until his come mingles with that sweat. It wouldn't take long, not now, and such a lovely sight would make it easy for him to be ready for whatever else Pitch has planned. 

            Pitch gives him an easy, toothy smile as he quickly cleans his softening cock, as if he knows what Sandy's thinking, and Sandy feels himself throb painfully. He wants everything about Pitch, his glorious beast, his delicious cannibal. He would swear he's never wanted so  _rawly_  before, and he wonders what Pitch reads in his face. 

            Whatever he does, he appears to like it, as he tosses his tissues aside and climbs back onto the bed, stopping when he's on all fours over Sandy. "What kind of a worshipper have I been?" he murmurs. "I've filled you." He runs a hand over Sandy's belly again and down and around to squeeze his ass. "But I haven't satisfied you." He bends and kisses Sandy's sternum. "Let me take care of that," he says, licking his lips.

            He takes Sandy's cock into his beautiful, dangerous mouth and hums around it for a moment. He caresses the head with his agile tongue and Sandy twists his hands in the sheets, wishing Pitch would hold his hips still because right now, he just wants to  _feel_ , and not think about control. Pitch is probably the only person in the world who could make him want that, he thinks fleetingly. And then Pitch moves down, sucking hard, swallowing around him, and there is no space in Sandy's mind for anything but pleasure. 

            Pitch pleasures Sandy not with the surprising efficiency he sometimes does, but with a sort of teasing languor that says he's enjoying this to the point of distraction as well; enjoying the taste and heat and texture of Sandy's swollen cock in his mouth, enjoying holding Sandy still with one strong, graceful hand, enjoying using the other to stroke his inner thighs, fondle his balls, and to finally slip a finger inside him again, to move in counterpoint to his mouth and seek his prostate. 

            "I'm going to come soon, very soon," Sandy gasps, clenching around Pitch's finger as Pitch swallows him to the base again. "If you—" He doesn't know what he's going to say, and when Pitch meets his eyes he can't say anything anyway. And then he feels Pitch's lips move, feels Pitch's teeth, just enough for him to know that they're there, really touching him. And with this, he comes down Pitch's throat irresistibly, calling Pitch's name, in what seems like an endless wave of ecstasy. 

            "That's an old joke about trust, isn't it?" Pitch murmurs when Sandy’s eyes find him again. He blots at the sweat at Sandy's hairline, and Sandy laughs a little as he gently pushes his arm away.  Pitch can be strangely fastidious about things sometimes, and though Sandy likes being cleaned and pampered, he's not done with what he wants to do with Pitch. And Pitch, very clearly, isn't done with what he wants to do with Sandy. His cock is standing once more, and even if Sandy's only feeling up to providing some filthy talk and a friendly hand right now, Sandy thinks he'll appreciate it. And it won't take him long to recover from that, either, now will it? Sandy smirks a little as he guides Pitch to recline against the pillows. Pitch's limits in that regard have always been high, and with so much of his glorious kill in him, well.

            So much of his glorious kill, so much of that beautiful young man, so much flesh, so much meat. It's actually visible on Pitch, just how much. That's part of the reason Sandy has him recline. 

            "Oh my," he murmurs, and his smile grows wider. "What have we here?" He runs his hands over the slight bulge of Pitch's belly. It seems warmer than the rest of him—perhaps an illusion, perhaps an effect caused by increased blood flow to address his huge meal. "You really did sate yourself on him, my dear, didn't you? Hmm." He keeps one hand moving, caressing, as he leans on his side next to Pitch. "There's so much of Nightlight inside you now. So much of his sweet flesh, filling you up. All his succulent meat, straining your belly. Incredible," he says, and splays his fingers as wide as he can. 

            Precome beads readily from the tip of Pitch's cock, and Sandy brings his mouth closer to his ear. "You're so  _full_ , Pitch. You're full of perfection, and I bet it feels good, more than good." He hums again, rubbing Pitch's stomach in slow circles while he raises himself slightly, enough to move his other hand to rest lightly on Pitch's throat. "And I have to admit, that feeling you this full, it's almost astonishing that you were able to swallow the morsel of my come." Sandy hears the faintest whine from Pitch; his straining erection probably is painful to him by now, it looks it. "Oh, Pitch, you are so very ravenous. Do you think it will be safe for me to satisfy you, even if you already have a bellyful of flesh?"

            "Sandy, please, please." Pitch twists against the sheets, and Sandy smiles at him, moving the hand at his throat to pet his hair. 

            "Ah, now that's no answer at all," Sandy says softly. He bends to lightly kiss Pitch's lips, leans away towards the bedside table for a moment, and brings himself close again to wrap his freshly slicked hand around Pitch's aching, ruddy cock.  
  
*

 

            It takes more than one orgasm to bring Pitch down again, and when he invites Sandy to fuck him after the second, Sandy is only too ready to take him up on it. After finishing himself—and Pitch,  _again_ , astounding—though, he can't help but yawn hugely. "You've gotten me to quite wear myself out," he says, looking at Pitch fondly. 

            "I suppose the last need I can help you satisfy then is sleep," Pitch says, yawning himself. "If we just clean up a little, we can bring the heavy blanket back over."

            "And hibernate," Sandy says, reaching out and lightly resting his hand on Pitch's back.  
  
*

 

            Soon enough, they're curled under the covers together, very warm and very sleepy. Sandy listens to Pitch's soft, peaceful breathing, and the howling of the wind outside. Needles of rain approaching ice tick at the windows, and Sandy presses his back more firmly against Pitch's warmth. He rests one hand on the upper curve of his belly and smiles to himself. He can't remember when he's been so very satisfied in his life.  
  
*

 

            In the morning, Pitch and Sandy wake up slowly, and earn their showers before taking them. But nothing is nearly so frantic as it was, and when they go downstairs in comfortable clothes and socked feet, the rest of the morning and the rest of the day stretch leisurely before them. Pitch busies himself in the kitchen cooking some eggs for breakfast, and Sandy goes downstairs to fire up the incinerator to take care of Nightlight's ruined clothes and those of Pitch and Sandy's that have his blood on them. 

            He doesn’t burn Nightlight’s wallet, yet, but places it in his pocket and returns upstairs. 

            "Driver's license, punch card for Clipper Coffee, medical, dental, and vision insurance cards, proof of car insurance, provisional library card, $17.84 in cash, one bank card, and one credit card," Sandy says, displaying the items before him. "And, of special interest, a photograph of Nightlight with a young man who looks very much like him, presumably Jack, as well as a post-it note which shows an address, written quite legibly, that matches the one Nightlight provided yesterday while under the influence."

            "It's good to know that Nightlight was telling the truth about that," Pitch says. He spreads butter on a piece of homemade bread and takes a bite. "And also clear that he was as new in town as he said."

            "The driver's license is still out of state," Sandy observes. "Did he drive to the park or walk?"

            "He walked," Pitch says. "If not, I would have had us deal with the car while he was still alive."

            "Good," Sandy says. "Well, the cash we'll use, and all the identifying information will of course go into the incinerator. As there is no conclusive proof out in the world at this moment that says Nightlight is dead, I'll make what use I can of the bank and credit cards today."

            "Speaking of that proof," Pitch says, turning his full attention to Sandy, "Nightlight made a last request of me."

            "What was it?"

            "He wants his family to know that he's dead," Pitch says. "Because of his brother leaving the way he did. He doesn't want them to wonder if he's still alive or not."

            Sandy folds his hands neatly in front of him. "And did that seem to be the entire substance of the request? He wasn't just making as a last effort for us to be caught?"

            "I think he was really genuine, though I don't have your subtlety at the best of times, and I was capable of no cold-blooded analysis at that moment."

            Sandy nods. "True, but I believe your assessment of Nightlight. He was, after all, a paragon. Well. I don't see any reason why we shouldn't consider possibilities for fulfilling his request." He relaxes his hands and smiles slightly. "Especially when doing so might provide an excellent pretext to meet his brother."

            Pitch tilts his head. "You want to do that soon, don't you?"

            "I'd like to invite him over as our dinner guest while we still have certain ingredients," Sandy says. "That is, if you're willing to share any more. I won't know if this is something I definitely want to do until I see this Jack, but I very much would like to make sure that the possibility remains open."

            Pitch leans back and considers Sandy. "If you decide that he's worthy, I'll share," he says.

"Now  _that's_ real trust," Sandy says with a slow wink.  
  
*

 

            The fact that Nightlight has dental insurance makes the plan quite simple. After cleaning Nightlight's skull, Pitch returns it in the dead of night to the out of the way fountain in the park. 

            For the past two days he's been running as normally—well, perhaps with more speed and endurance, but he has no way of quantifying this. He wonders if tomorrow, he'll be the first one to discover Nightlight's skull. He hopes not. It would require so much acting, and he doesn't want to have to try to appear normal and ruin the well-being that's suffused him since he took the first taste of Nightlight's blood.

            So he delays his run slightly after placing the skull, and when he does round the curve to that isolated fountain, he's relieved to see a few police officers on the path. One blocks off the fountain, while another speaks to a rattled-looking young woman in running clothes. The third takes pictures of the scene with a bright, bright flash, and Pitch wonders for a moment if the extremely too-small shoes he wore while placing the skull have left noticeable footprints on the hard, leaf-covered ground.

            It doesn't really matter, though. They've already been burned by now.

            "What's going on?" he asks the officer with the notebook when the woman pauses. "Was there an accident?" It's a gormless question, but he seems to pull it off. 

            "Nobody's in any immediate danger," the officer reassures him. "But, somebody  _was_ , a while ago."

            Pitch frowns like he doesn't get it and the young woman turns to him, her eyes wide. "Someone was murdered!" she says. "I found a human skull just sitting in the fountain!"

            The officer grimaces in irritation. "We don't know for sure if someone was murdered yet. We need to find out who the skull belongs to, first. If we're all lucky, that skull will turn out to belong to someone who donated their body to the medical school, and it ended up here as part of a weird, nasty prank."

            "How morbid to treat human remains in such a way," Pitch remarks.

            "You got that right," the officer says. "Almost wish we would have come out here to find a really good fake. Anyway. Do you normally run this route?"

            "I do," Pitch says. Will they want a statement from him? And why? 

            "Have you seen anything suspicious, lately? People acting strangely, anyone who didn't seem to fit with the area? Here." The officer pauses and waves over the one who had been blocking off the fountain. "I'm going to finish talking to her, and if there's anything you can remember that seemed out of the ordinary, Edgars will take it down."

            Edgars seems distracted, and Pitch doesn't smile at him, opting instead for a look of mild worry. Of course he's worried. Someone got murdered on his running route, after all.

            "Right," Edgars begins, after taking Pitch's name. "Did you see anything unusual around here recently?"

            Pitch pauses to think. He knows what he's about to do could be dangerous, but it might speed their investigation along, and that will be good for Sandy's purposes. "The only unusual thing I recall," he says, "is that a couple days ago the young man I had started to run with in the mornings didn't show up at our usual time. But, then again, I know he was looking for a job, so perhaps he simply found one with a schedule that precluded morning runs. We only knew each other through running, you see. I don't think he would have taken it upon himself to tell me."

            Edgars frowns and nods. "What's his name?"

            "Nightlight...oh, what was it...Frost. Nightlight Frost, that was it."

            Edgars writes it down. "Well, I hope we find him in a local office somewhere."

            Pitch nods, though he's spent plenty of time in offices and truly thinks he would prefer to be eaten, at this point. But he says nothing. He knows his opinion is rather unusual, and rather biased.

            "All right. Well, that's it for you, unless there's anything else you remember," Edgars says. Pitch shakes his head.

            And that, apparently, is that. Pitch and the other runner are sent along to find a different running path, and—save for the mediocrity of the park's other water fountains—the run is as fine as any Pitch has ever taken.   
  
*

 

            "Your risk paid off," Sandy says, checking the local news later that night. "They've identified the skull as Nightlight's, and they've contacted his family." He looks up from his tablet. "Including his brother, who lives locally. I don't doubt that he's their only person of interest right now. They always look at family first, when there's no other reason or connection. Luckily for Jack, there's no evidence linking him with the murder."

            "Yet," Pitch says.

            "Yet," Sandy agrees. "And even once there is, it won't be anything anyone's going to look for."  
  
*

 

            Jack's phone buzzes where it sits on his coffee table, and he glares at it from over a cold cup of coffee. He doesn't want to answer, and if it's his parents or anyone else in his family, he won't. He already talked to them yesterday. They hadn't been satisfied with the conversation or with his reaction, but Jack couldn't help that. His twin's skull had been found in a local park. What was he supposed to feel about that? Anguish? Regret? Anger? Fear? Was he supposed to feel guilty about it? If Jack hadn't cut himself off from family in the first place, Nightlight wouldn't have moved here to look for him, to try to reconcile with him.

            If he could feel that, maybe he'd have a chance of getting through this all right. But no. 

Sure, he feels plenty of things, probably all the right emotions, too. But he's pretty sure he feels most of them for the wrong reasons, or not in the right amounts, or something. 

            The phone keeps buzzing. Jack manages to make himself move to look at the number. It's local. "Fuck," Jack mutters, and reaches to pick it up. If it's the cops, he has to answer. He doesn't want to give them a reason to start seriously thinking of him as a suspect, especially since Nightlight hadn't had a chance to make a lot of friends here, yet. He scoffs. A couple more months, and the cops would have been hip-deep in suspects.

            "Hello," he says.

            "Jack Frost?" The voice isn't a cop's voice, and Jack doesn't think it sounds like a reporter, either.

            "That's me."

            "Well, I...I know what I'm about to say may seem rather odd, but if you'll just hear me out? My name is Pitch Black, and I used to run with your brother. We became rather close on our short friendship, and he gave me your phone number in case of an emergency, since you were the only other local person that knew him."

            There's a long pause, but Jack doesn't say anything.

            "I suppose that emergency already happened. Well. I know your relationship with your family is strained, and though I don't know the nature of it I can't imagine that reuniting for a funeral would be ideal. But since we're both in town, would you like to come to dinner at my home? My partner and I would cook; you wouldn't have to bring anything. I'd simply like to...remember Nightlight with someone who knew him. The whole situation is just so strange and frightening, and I can't go to the funeral either. I wanted to offer an evening of peace, if I could."

            Jack's first reaction is exasperation. Of course Nightlight would make close friends so quickly! Of course he'd manage to have enough of himself to share even when he had supposedly moved out here specifically for Jack! 

            He brings his hand to his forehead. How did he manage to be so selfish and live? But it was really only Nightlight, wasn't it? He could manage to be a normal person when Nightlight wasn't concerned, couldn't he? But now that Nightlight was dead, could anything  _not_  be about Nightlight anymore? People who knew them both would look at him and always see his twin. 

Sudden, humorless, laughter threatens to well up out of Jack's throat. Good! Good! Nightlight would always be with him now, no one could take him away, not even Nightlight could take himself away. He wondered what had happened to his skull. Would they burn it so that it would be a nice polite pile of ashes? What a waste. If they couldn't keep it, at least make it into a diamond.

            He touches his fingers to his empty ear piercing. He'd been hoping it would heal, a ghastly thing that he got before he thought about how it could be used to easily tell him apart from Nightlight. If his brother was a diamond, though...

            He remembers that Pitch is still waiting for his answer. "Yeah," he says. "I'd love to. I'm pretty free; what day works for you?"  
  
*

 

            "What is it that you're looking for, in this Jack?" Pitch asks, an hour or so before dinner. Two pots of green chile stew gently simmer on the stove. One's made with pork, the other's made with Nightlight. They both smell heavenly, but Pitch would stake his life on being able to tell the difference between the rare and common meat.

            "I'm looking to see what he's hungry for," Sandy says. "His dissatisfactions, his longings. The absences and negative spaces in his life."

            Pitch raises an eyebrow and Sandy grins slowly. 

            "I'm looking to see if he wants something the world can't give him, but I can," Sandy says. "The fees for my services of this kind are somewhat high, I've been told, but..."

            "But good use will be made of the arm and a leg you charge," Pitch says.

            Sandy chuckles. "Oh, yes. Yes, indeed." He leans on the kitchen island and continues the sketch he had been working on, a tree and its root system. "I love desperate longing, you know that. You could say that's what I hunger for. It's what I saw in you, though I didn't understand it at first. And I never would have tried to satisfy it with another's flesh as literally as you—I wouldn't have thought of it. And now that I have...there's something extraordinarily exquisite about it, yes, but that feeling of monstrosity, of divinity...it's not the exact thing I look for."

He pauses in his drawing and looks up. "Perhaps I have managed to mostly wean myself from obsession, but when I have the chance to get at an unusual or particular variety, and perhaps assuage it a way only I would dare—well, can you blame me for at least wanting to test if it's really there?"

            "No more than you blamed me for hunting Nightlight," Pitch says. "I admit I'm curious to watch you, tonight. Aside from myself, I've never seen you observe someone with an intent to select them to bring to perfection or not."

            "I truly hope he'll pass muster," Sandy says. "I, of course, am biased, but I always find those individuals infinitely more interesting."  
  
*

 

            Jack arrives right on time, just a minute or two after the basement door has been locked and a plate of cheese and fruit has been set out on the coffee table.

            Pitch opens the door, prepared for what he is going to see, but also knowing that a little strangeness of reaction might be overlooked in this case. 

            The cold wind blows in around the young man, and Pitch can't keep his eyes from widening, even as he welcomes him and guides him to the living room. So this is Jack, Nightlight's twin. And yes, they do look alike, very much alike. No doubt they were born identical. But now...

            Jack moves differently than Nightlight, half as if he's afraid he won't be seen, half as if he's trying not to be seen. His skin is as fair as Nightlight's, and it stands out starkly against the dark blue sweater he wears, but for him it is not the word "fair" that comes to mind, but rather, "ghostly." He has the same light hair, but where Nightlight's had been professionally cut, Jack's looks like he attacked it with a scissors to thwart the wind, but hadn't succeeded.

            Interesting, though, that both of them should wear the same unnatural hair color. 

            He moves through condolences with Jack, who seems rather uncomfortable with them, and introduces him to Sandy. There's something bizarre about the introduction, but he can't quite figure out what it is until Sandy is offering Jack a glass of wine. Precisely none of Sandy's attention is on Pitch, when at all other times when they've been in the same space, at least a little of Sandy's awareness has been given to him. 

            Now, Pitch doubts Sandy would notice if Pitch came up to him to slit his throat. It's an uncomfortable awareness, and he wonders what Sandy is seeing in Jack. He doesn't achieve Nightlight's perfection, that much is sure. He doesn't stand out as someone to consume, not immediately. 

            He wonders if his opinion will change by the time Sandy tells him what they'll be serving to Jack.  
  
*

 

            When Jack walks in, Sandy finds himself totally and entirely drawn to him. Jack appears to be—well—not exactly what he expected, because he had tried to restrict himself from building an imaginary Jack in order to better see the real one when he arrived, but what he would have hoped for, had he allowed himself that luxury. 

            Jack's face is a little sharper than Nightlight's, and even in bulkier clothes than Sandy ever saw Nightlight wearing, he looks a little thinner. Lack of exercise and a fast metabolism, one part of Sandy thinks, while another part of him whispers in delight that Jack is burning from the inside with a flame that never lit in Nightlight's guts.

            His blue eyes are just as sharp in his pale face as they were in Nightlight's, and his hair? Oh, hardly cared for, save for the maintenance that makes it the same color as his estranged twin's. Sandy smiles, and claims he does so because the wine is one of his favorites. And it is, but that's not the reason. Oh no. Not at all. 

            Sandy watches Jack move, in all his defiant quickness and febrile flamboyance, his wary stillnesses in between. He does not move like a man in mourning. He moves like he expects to have to fight an opponent he can't win at any moment, and the only way to survive is to entertain whoever's bet on it. He moves like he's trying to keep hold of something he doesn't think he should have, or like he's planning to steal something. Sandy's sure that Jack's not a thief, though, not in a traditional sense, nor even a kleptomaniac. No, Jack seems like whatever it is that he's holding on to or wanting to steal is something very, very specific. 

            But what does it have to do with his brother? If nothing, then—oh well. He'll still be worth watching, at least. 

            And yet Nightlight had said that Jack had wished that they were the same person somehow, wished it many times. What did that mean for this tense, spare, flame of a young man?

            Sandy opens the conversation gently, expressing his sympathies for Jack's recent loss, saying that he had only met Nightlight once but that he seemed exceptional. Pitch picks it up from there, asking if it feels strange to lose someone so close, even if they were recently estranged.

            "I got the impression that it was not your relationship with Nightlight that caused you to sever ties with your family," Pitch says.

            Jack admits this to be true, but he doesn't crack open yet.

            Sandy tries a hammer he thinks will be suitable for this shell. "I can't speak to it from personal experience, but I imagine that losing a twin must be one of the most devastating losses in the world. It would be hard to know how to react."

            Jack's eyes go wide, as if he's been caught out in something. His next sip of wine is much larger than the ones he had taken before. "I barely knew how to react to Nightlight while he was alive," he says. "Nightlight is...Nightlight was..." He frowns. "I don't know if Nightlight would have understood what you just said. He'd bring up all these other relationships, just to argue, and he'd never admit if he understood, that it's never the same. That being his brother..." Jack takes another drink. "I don't know how to react, you're right."

            "You can react however you want," Sandy says. "I've trained with grief counseling. It's better for you to react as you need to rather than how you think you're supposed to."

            Jack shifts his shoulders, and his gaze flicks up at Sandy, over to Pitch. "Yeah, well...you don't know him that well, but you do know he was my brother, so I don't know about—" He shuts his mouth tightly.

            That will never do. There's something very promising about Jack, but he can't see it exactly unless Jack shows it. "Is it the way that his remains were found that you find so troubling?" Sandy asks.

            Jack's attention returns to Sandy, and he smiles briefly. Sandy believes he recognizes the expression. It's the kind that says, "All right, you're a freak. But not as much of a freak as me."            He's seen that smile justified on Pitch's face, and present on those he collected—the ones that could smile, anyway. He's seen it on others, too, but now, now it is a very promising sign. Imagine, Nightlight's body as bait for his brother. 

            But does the smile mean what it usually does? That the speaker is going to reveal much more than they realize, much more than is wise, assuming that they person they smiled at really is innocent of the things that made them smile?

            "I think that what gets me the most is that whoever killed him didn't keep his head, but they kept the rest of him," Jack says. "Didn't they know that the most likely thing to happen to it once they let it go was that it would be buried?"  
  
*

 

            Pitch doesn't precisely follow everything that passes between Sandy and Jack, though he does end up feeling strangely jealous as he watches Jack give Sandy so much information, and watches Sandy receive it so avidly. When he and Sandy go into the kitchen to get the food he's not surprised when Sandy indicates that they'll be serving Nightlight. 

            Jack closes his eyes and breathes deeply when they return to the dining room. "That smells amazing," he says, and Sandy smiles at him. 

            "Only the best for guests," Sandy says as ladles stew into wide, shallow bowls. He gives Pitch a little smile when he settles back into his seat, and Pitch returns it with no hesitation. Yes, of course Sandy may smile at Jack, but Jack doesn't know what he's seeing. Pitch does.

            Jack praises the food, and Sandy lightly presses him to talk more about Nightlight. And he does, and he does, and he does, though Pitch observes him growing calmer as the meal goes on. Sandy no doubt does as well, which must have something to do with the encouragement he gives Jack to take seconds, to take thirds.

            By the time they've finished, Jack has eaten nearly as much as Pitch.

            Pitch looks to Sandy and licks his lips only half-consciously. Belly full of Nightlight again, he wants nothing more than for Jack to be on his way. Sandy meets his eyes, and gives him a slight nod. He understands. And there's a feverish glint in his eyes, too, that makes Pitch grateful for the tablecloth even as he grits his teeth against the moment when they show Jack the door. 

            Jack gives a contented sigh, and Sandy's gaze fixes on him with an intensity that must seem out of place. But Jack doesn't notice, and Pitch almost gives a contented sigh himself. Of course any jealousy he had earlier was ridiculous. Jack, for all his other appeal, is simply another person who doesn't know how to  _watch_.

            "Thank you," Jack says. "This has been—as you said, Pitch—a peaceful evening. I'm glad I got to talk things out. And—wow, you're a fantastic cook. I don't know what it is, but I can't remember the last time I had something so...satisfying." He smiles and shakes his head at himself, as if to mock his own word choice. 

            Pitch doubts the thanks he gives for the compliment sound at all correct for the situation, but Sandy offers a distraction, giving his condolences once again, and speaking of how it now seems as though he really knew Nightlight, of the tragedy of him now being gone. He casually glances at the watch he doesn't normally wear and adds more immediate dismay into his tone. It's later than he thought, and he and Pitch have to get up early tomorrow, would Jack forgive them for not offering after-dinner coffee?

            "Oh, that's all right," Jack says. "I didn't even think of that as an option. Yeah, sorry to keep you guys up, and, well, I guess I dominated the conversation, didn't I?"

            "But you're the one who knew the one we gathered for the best," Sandy says. He's already guided Jack halfway through the living room. "I'm simply glad that you managed to find something of use in an evening spent with total strangers."

            Jack nods. He still looks relaxed, and Sandy guesses that it's at least partially because he himself is doing an excellent job of pretending that he hasn't noticed anything unusual about the kinds of things Jack said during his visit.

            "Useful? Nah, it was more than useful. It would have been good even if I hadn't gotten a chance to talk. The food, again—fantastic."

            "Perhaps since we're no longer perfect strangers, we'll have to invite you over again for just that," Pitch says, and Sandy smiles at him—sunnily, as if he's just so very glad to have such a considerate partner. But he thinks Pitch will understand. As the cook and the one who had known Nightlight, that was definitely his to say. It's also something that Sandy had been hoping he would know to do, after Sandy had had Pitch serve Nightlight. 

            Jack must come back sometime, after that.

            "Yeah," Jack says. "For that kind of cooking? Yeah, definitely."

            Sandy grins at him, perhaps more widely than makes sense for a social nicety, however sincere. Behind them, Pitch opens the front door. Jack takes the signal at once, and a few goodbyes later, Sandy and Pitch are alone again.

            "Well," Pitch says, his voice low and tense. "What did you think of him?"

            "He's fantastic," Sandy purrs. "His mania for his twin brother is an exquisite thing. There's a longing for possession, and a longing for unity, and a love that is not simply incestual, though it does contain some of those elements; jealousy and envy and, oh, the utter conflict of being the one to finally possess Nightlight's face even as the rest of Nightlight is lost." He chuckles. "He grew so calm and content during the meal, and he didn't even know what it was. But if he had—I think that after a certain amount of care, that meal with full knowledge would produce an effect even more profoundly beneficial. He'll be a delight to work with."

            When he focuses on Pitch again, Pitch is looking at him with a softer smile than Sandy would have thought him capable of producing after such a meal, in such a moment. "What is it?" Sandy asks.

            "I'm sure he will be a delight," Pitch says. "And I'm glad to hear you speak this way about him, after he drew your attention so completely. I'll be glad to watch you work this time, if you'll let me."

            "Well," Sandy begins, but a loud growl of his stomach interrupts whatever his next thought was going to be.

            Pitch's smile changes to show the glint of his teeth and he steps closer to Sandy. 

            "Well," Sandy says. "I suppose I mustn’t forget to mention that there is also that aspect of his appeal." He takes Pitch's hands. "What do you think of the idea of us truly working in collaboration on Jack?"

            Pitch holds his eyes as he raises Sandy's hands and brings them to his mouth, carefully kissing the knuckles. "I don't think we're going to make it upstairs," he says.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the pork stew recipe I was thinking of at the end:  
> http://allrecipes.com/recipe/211541/pork-stew-in-green-salsa-guisado-de-puerco-con-tomatillos/?internalSource=search%20result&referringContentType=search%20results#
> 
> It's really good. Make it with pork.


End file.
